Portrait of a Young Girl, probably Anna de Bye (1636-1713)

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Judging by the crack pattern the bars of the original strainer were approx. 6 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The single, warm reddish-brown ground extends up to the tacking edges. It consists of yellow earth pigment, glass-like particles, some white and a few fine dark red, bright orange and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing A grey-black underdrawing in a liquid medium, delineating the folds in the yellow-golden cloth in the lower right corner, is visible with the naked eye and infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up the tacking edges. A dark brown, initial lay-in was left exposed locally, for example in the background, the shadows of the face and the darker areas of the hair. The dress, however, was left in reserve in the lay-in, the colour of the ground serving as its base. The painting was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, leaving most elements reserved in the background. The dress was composed of warm pinkish tones on top of which cool whites were scumbled to create a satiny appearance. The shepherd’s staff and flowers were painted over the finished skirt, and the yellow-golden fabric extends partially over it. The flesh tones were thinly brushed over the first lay-in. The paints were applied with dry brushstrokes, with slight impasto in the highlights. Coarse bluish pigment particles are visible with the naked eye in the gold-like cloth, and may have served as a filler or drier.
Michel van de Laar, 2024

P. d’Imporzano, Implications of Lead Isotope Variation in Lead White from 17th Century Dutch Paintings, diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 2021, p. 106; P. d’Imporzano et al., ‘Time-Dependent Variation of Lead Isotopes of Lead White in 17th Century Dutch Paintings’, Science Advances 7 (2021), pp. 1-14, esp. pp. 5-7 (see doi 10.1126/sciadv.abi5905)

Good. There is an old, repaired tear in the upper right corner. The dark colours have darkened more than the lighter ones. Moating can be seen around areas of impasto.

A dark brown pear scotia frame¹¹De Bruyn Kops in P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Prijst de lijst: De Hollandse schilderijlijst in de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1984, p. 154; C.J. de Bruyn Kops, ‘Praktische en technische aspecten van onderzoek naar de ontwikkeling en toepassing van de Nederlandse schilderijlijst in de zeventiende eeuw’, in ibid., pp. 37-66, esp. p. 61, fig. Q1; De Bruyn Kops in P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: Picture and Frame in 17th-Century Holland, Zwolle 1995, p. 200; C.J. de Bruyn Kops, ‘Researching the Use and Development of the Dutch Picture Frame: Some Practical and Technical Aspects’, in ibid., pp. 55-93, esp. p. 84, fig. Q1.

For both the present painting (SK-A-1311) and its pendant (SK-A-1310)
? Commissioned by the sitters’ uncle, Frederik Dircksz Alewijn (1603-1665), Amsterdam; ? his probate inventory, 18 December 1665, in the central room of the house at 182 Herengracht, Amsterdam, nos. 37a, 37b, as Anonymous (‘2 schilderije contrefeijtsels van de kinderen t eene een van Martinus Allewijn en tander van de nicht de Bij’);²²GPI, N-2349, no. 37. ? his son, Dirck Alewijn (1644-1687), Amsterdam; ? his son, Dirck Alewijn (1682-1742), Amsterdam and Beemster; ? his son, Frederik Alewijn (1737-1804), Amsterdam and Beemster; ? his son, Frederik Alewijn (1775-1817), Hoorn and Beemster; his son, Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-1885), Hoorn and Medemblik;³³Note RMA. his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 16 December 1885, nos. 79, 80, fl. 845, to the dealer Muller, as Abraham van Santvoort;⁴⁴Copy RMA. NHA, ARS, IS, inv. 165, nos. 491 (15 December 1885), 493 (15 December 1885), 497 (17 December 1885), 498 (18 December 1885). from whom, fl. 971.75, to the museum, 1885

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1311

This painting and its pendant of a young boy (SK-A-1310; also fig. a) have been regarded since the early twentieth century as the portraits of Martinus (1634-1665) and Clara Alewijn (1635-1674), the eldest son and daughter of the Amsterdam cloth merchant and dealer in Indonesian goods Abraham Alewijn and Geertruid Hooftman.¹⁰¹⁰Martinus became a merchant in Amsterdam and a lieutenant in the civic guard, and married his second cousin Anna Hooftman; J.E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam 1578-1795, I, Haarlem 1903, p. 501. In 1655 Clara married the merchant and regent Daniel Bernard, Lord of Kattenbroek and the Uytendijken van Mastwijk; ibid., II, 1905, p. 608, no. 240. Both works were auctioned in 1885 by a direct descendant of their father’s elder brother Frederik Dircksz Alewijn (1603-1665).¹¹¹¹See Provenance. The girl was at the time thought to be Anna Alewijn, which is also the name given on a nineteenth-century label on the reverse of that picture. However, in a manuscript annotation in a copy of the sale catalogue she is recorded as Clara Alewijn,¹²¹²Copy RMA. and that is how she has been identified in the museum since 1903. The back of the boy’s portrait also bears a label, indicating Martinus’s name and details.¹³¹³D.C. Meijer Jr, ‘De familieportretten der Alewijns’, De Gids 50 (1886), pp. 326-39, esp. p. 338, doubted that identification, but followed the sale catalogue in attributing the painting to Abraham van Santvoort, who is known only as an engraver and preacher. He is said to be 10 years old and Anna 9.

The boy has been correctly recognized, but the girl is probably someone else altogether.¹⁴¹⁴A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair 1983, p. 152, note 44, cites the idealized faces as evidence for her odd suggestion that the paintings were not intended to be portraits. Upon the death of the aforementioned Frederik Dircksz Alewijn, who sat himself for Dirck van Santvoort in 1640,¹⁵¹⁵For his portrait see SK-A-1317. As stated in the entry on that painting Van Santvoort can be regarded as the family portraitist. an inventory was made up of his collection of pictures, prints and drawings in the house at 182 Herengracht in Amsterdam. It includes ‘2 paintings, likenesses of the children, the one of Martinus Alewijn and the other of cousin De Bye’.¹⁶¹⁶See Provenance. Frederik Dircksz Alewijn owned several portraits of members of the De Bye family, for his 1665 probate inventory also mentions ‘3 likenesses of De Bye and his wife and son’; GPI, N-2349, no. 65. This is the only mention of a portrait of Martinus in the list, and since the two are recorded as a pair it is very unlikely that the reference is not to the present works by Van Santvoort. This means that Martinus is accompanied not by his sister Clara but by a first cousin who can be identified as Anna de Bye (1636-1713).¹⁷¹⁷With thanks to Rudi Ekkart for his suggestion that the girl should be sought in that branch of the family. She was the eldest daughter of Arent de Bye (1600-1652), Lord of Wayenstein, burgomaster of Zaltbommel and dyke-reeve of the Bommelerwaard in Gelderland,¹⁸¹⁸On him see A.J. van der Aa et al., Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden, bevattende levensbeschrijvingen van zoodanige personen, die zich op eenigerlei wijze in ons vaderland hebben vermaard gemaakt, II-2, Haarlem 1855, pp. 1684-85. and Margaretha Bicker (1614-?), the sister of Frederik Dircksz Alewijn’s second wife Eva Bicker. Around 1644, when the girl’s portrait must have been painted,¹⁹¹⁹The one of Martinus is dated 1644. Anna de Bye was about 8 years old and that certainly matches her apparent age in the picture. This identification would also explain why the label on the back of that likeness wrongly says that she is Anna Alewijn, which is not all that wide of the mark.²⁰²⁰In 1664 Anna de Bye would marry Jacob van de Steen (1616-1683), burgomaster of Tiel, delegate to the States-General and trustee of the academy in Harderwijk; A.J. van der Aa et al., Biographisch woordenboek der Nederlanden, bevattende levensbeschrijvingen van zoodanige personen, die zich op eenigerlei wijze in ons vaderland hebben vermaard gemaakt, XVII-2, Haarlem 1874, p. 971.

It has been suggested that there is a connection between these pastoral children’s portraits and the fact that Frederik Dircksz Alewijn built Vredenburgh, his country seat, between 1643 and 1649.²¹²¹A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair 1983, p. 11; Ekkart rejected this hypothesis in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, p. 188. It is not at all clear that both works proclaim a love of the outdoor life, but given their provenance they were indeed probably ordered by him. His eldest son Dirck Alewijn (1644-1687) was baptized on 1 September 1644, and his birth may have been the reason to commission two pastoral portraits of his eldest cousins. One of the same type by Van Santvoort is identified as that of Dirck in the 1885 sale catalogue,²²²²Sale, Dirk Margarethus Alewijn (1816-1885, Hoorn and Medemblik), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 16 December 1885, no. 15 (as J.G. Cuyp); present whereabouts unknown. but Ekkart dated it to 1640-41, so before Dirck was born, and considered Martinus’s younger brother Abraham a suitable candidate.²³²³See IB, no. 119058.

The grounds of the two Rijksmuseum portraits do not match, and there are also differences in technique.²⁴²⁴See Technical notes. The girl takes up less of the picture surface than does the boy, which may indicate that the paintings were conceived not so much as companion pieces but were commissioned as two autonomous works. However, the similar dimensions, backgrounds and frames suggest that the artist did regard them as complementary.²⁵²⁵C.J. de Bruyn Kops, ‘Researching the Use and Development of the Dutch Picture Frame: Some Practical and Technical Aspects’, in P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: Picture and Frame in 17th-Century Holland, Zwolle 1995, pp. 55-93, esp. p. 84, fig. Q1. The technical disparities may be due to the fact that the children lived in different places, Martinus Alewijn in Amsterdam and Anna de Bye in Zaltbommel. Interestingly, the composition of the ground in Martinus’s portrait seems identical to that of Van Santvoort’s Directors of the Serge Cloth Industry of 1643,²⁶²⁶SK-C-394. See Technical notes. which was definitely executed in Amsterdam.

Dirck van Santvoort, Aelbert and Jacob Cuyp and Wybrand de Geest were the main exponents of the pastoral child’s portrait, a genre that was extremely popular for several decades after the late 1630s.²⁷²⁷A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair 1983, pp. 64-65. In these two pictures the artist posed the young sitters against a landscape background (which is far more convincingly related to the foreground in the girl’s likeness). Their colourful, fancy clothing and the allegorical accessories create an Arcadian mood.²⁸²⁸On which see A. McNeil Kettering, ‘Gender Issues in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Portraiture: A New Look’, in R.E. Fleischer and S.C. Scott (eds.), Rembrandt, Rubens and the Art of their Time: Recent Perspectives, Penn State University Park 1997, pp. 144-75, esp. pp. 149-50. The girl is wearing a costly, pink, satin dress, and holds a shepherd’s staff and a cord in her hand with which she is making a garland of flowers like the one around her left forearm. Lying on the ground at the front are attributes of Diana, goddess of the hunt, which will also refer to the girl’s status. Only her coiffure, which is in the latest fashion, rises above the timeless nature of her attire. Martinus’s painting has the same connotations. He also holds a shepherd’s staff, and is accompanied by a greyhound, a classic hunting dog.²⁹²⁹For another interpretation of the dog see the entry on SK-A-1310. In the foreground lie a cap with three colourful plumes and a horn below it.³⁰³⁰On the cap see D. Hirschfelder, Tronie und Porträt in der niederländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008, p. 318, esp. note 83. The horn was originally used in hunting, but was increasingly presented as a musical instrument in court circles as the seventeenth century progressed; see Meijer in E. Buijsen et al., The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in the Golden Age, exh. cat. The Hague (Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder)/Antwerp (Hessenhuis) 1994, p. 154. Lambs often serve in pastoral children’s portraits as allusions to childhood innocence, and are also associated with the first ten years of a person’s life.³¹³¹A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair 1983, p. 74; Bedaux in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, p. 206.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

For both the present painting (SK-A-1311) and its pendant (SK-A-1310)
A. McNeil Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Montclair 1983, pp. 11, 17, 64, 171-72; Ekkart and Kuus in J.B. Bedaux and R.E.O. Ekkart (eds.), Pride and Joy: Children’s Portraits in the Netherlands 1500-1700, exh. cat. Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum)/Antwerp (Royal Museum of Fine Arts) 2000-01, pp. 186-89, nos. 43-44

1887, p. 152, no. 1284 (as Portrait of Anna Alewijn); 1903, p. 239, no. 2132 (as Portrait of Clara Alewijn); 1934, p. 257, no. 2133 (as Portrait of Clara Alewijn); 1976, p. 499, no. A 1311 (as Portrait of Clara Alewijn)

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2024, 'Dirck van Santvoort, Portrait of a Young Girl, probably Anna de Bye (1636-1713), c. 1644', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5376